‘Impossible Lives of Greta Wells’ is a passably fine read

In 2004, he wrote a well-received novel called The Confessions of Max Tivoli, about a man who appears to be old, but who grows younger every year, and who tries again and again to win the heart of the same woman, as time moves backwards.

In 2008, Brad Pitt starred in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which sure seemed to echo the plot of Max Tivoli. But Benjamin Button, it turns out, was based on an F. Scott Fitzgerald story. After the movie was released, Greer told a journalist he was unaware of the Fitzgerald tale when he wrote his novel.

Here we are in 2013, and Greer has a new novel, The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells. Through no fault of Greer's, it follows in the wake of Kate Atkinson's best seller Life After Life, a very similar but superior novel, which brilliantly imagines multiple lives for a character named Ursula Todd (born, and repeatedly reborn, in 1910).

The American Greta Wells differs from Englishwoman Ursula Todd in a fundamental way: Greta travels back and forth in time after she receives electroshock to treat depression caused by a) the death of her twin brother, Felix, and b) abandonment by her longtime lover, Nathan. The present is 1985, and Felix is one of the legion of young men in New York to die from AIDS.

As Greta "travels" to 1918 and 1941 after her treatments (of course it's possible these are nothing but hallucinations), Greer shuffles the deck of her life, with Felix and Nathan appearing as different versions of themselves. It's an intriguing conceit, especially to see how Felix handles his homosexuality during more repressive times. But again, I was reminded of another, better book: Michael Cunningham's Pulitzer Prize-winning The Hours, in which he played off Virginia Woolf's 1925 novel Mrs. Dalloway to draw devastating parallels between the First World War and the AIDS crisis.

Time-travel can be tricky to pull off; even Stephen King found it a slippery slope in the wonderfully entertaining 11/22/63. There are times when Greta Wells' lives do seem, well, impossible.

Still, Greer is a deep thinker and a fine stylist. If nothing else, consider reading Greta Wells for sentences like these:

"It is almost impossible to capture true sadness; it is a deep-sea creature that can never be brought into view." 'Imp

Consider the curious case of Andrew Sean Greer:

In 2004, he wrote a well-received novel called The Confessions of Max Tivoli, about a man who appears to be old, but who grows younger every year, and who tries again and again to win the heart of the same woman, as time moves backwards.

In 2008, Brad Pitt starred in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which sure seemed to echo the plot of Max Tivoli. But Benjamin Button, it turns out, was based on an F. Scott Fitzgerald story. After the movie was released, Greer told a journalist he was unaware of the Fitzgerald tale when he wrote his novel.

Here we are in 2013, and Greer has a new novel, The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells. Through no fault of Greer's, it follows in the wake of Kate Atkinson's best seller Life After Life, a very similar but superior novel, which brilliantly imagines multiple lives for a character named Ursula Todd (born, and repeatedly reborn, in 1910).

The American Greta Wells differs from Englishwoman Ursula Todd in a fundamental way: Greta travels back and forth in time after she receives electroshock to treat depression caused by a) the death of her twin brother, Felix, and b) abandonment by her longtime lover, Nathan. The present is 1985, and Felix is one of the legion of young men in New York to die from AIDS.

As Greta "travels" to 1918 and 1941 after her treatments (of course it's possible these are nothing but hallucinations), Greer shuffles the deck of her life, with Felix and Nathan appearing as different versions of themselves. It's an intriguing conceit, especially to see how Felix handles his homosexuality during more repressive times. But again, I was reminded of another, better book: Michael Cunningham's Pulitzer Prize-winning The Hours, in which he played off Virginia Woolf's 1925 novel Mrs. Dalloway to draw devastating parallels between the First World War and the AIDS crisis.

Time-travel can be tricky to pull off; even Stephen King found it a slippery slope in the wonderfully entertaining 11/22/63. There are times when Greta Wells' lives do seem, well, impossible.

Still, Greer is a deep thinker and a fine stylist. If nothing else, consider reading Greta Wells for sentences like these:

"It is almost impossible to capture true sadness; it is a deep-sea creature that can never be brought into view."

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